What the hell was she thinking? He was a complete stranger, and he’d just sauntered into her house in the middle of the night. This wasn’t a dream, it was a damned nightmare.
“Tell me how you know that I’m so powerful?” he retorted, amazed at her strength given she was just a local witch.
Most village witches couldn’t sense that he was a god. Some had realized he was powerful, but they had assumed, with their limited abilities, that he was another witch. Thena Cooke saw him for what he was, and now she worked to understand what she saw. There was power riveting through her that excited him, and he ached to learn more about her.
“I don’t know you. But if you were a gentleman you wouldn’t have barged into my home.” Thena stormed out of her living room.
She grabbed her clothes, struggling to get her shirt on before he was too close again. He could sense her outrage fighting with her arousal.
“I want you out. Get out now. Get the fuck out of my house,” she yelled at him, the moment she had her shirt pulled over her head.
He was inside her head, probing her senses. She didn’t like not being in control.
“You are letting your human fears consume you, Thena.” He helped her with her shirt, untangling it around her shoulders so that it would fall over her. But he couldn’t let her go. Taking her in his arms, he pulled her to him, feeling her breasts mash against his chest while he cupped his hands over her ass. “You have such untamed power. Relax. Calm down. See that there is nothing to fear here.”
Thena shoved hard against him. She pointed toward her living room. “How dare you tell me to calm down! Get the hell out of here before I call the police.”
He took her arm, holding it gently in his hand, and bent over to place a kiss on the inside of her elbow. Shivers rushed through her, his beard tickling her skin, sending a rush of desire so intense through her that she gasped.
He knew her name. He knew she was a witch. This was too much. Too damned much. Everything she’d been taught. All the lessons she’d heard again and again on being discreet, on serving those who needed her but never crossing the line and bragging about her heritage, tumbled through her. A complete stranger had strolled through her front door. He knew too much about her, and she knew nothing about him, and he was seducing her, torturing her senses with his words and actions and she didn’t have a fucking clue what to do about it.
There was one thing she did know. No stranger would ever seduce her. Not when she was drunk. Not when she was sober. Not in a bar or in her home. She had too much respect for her body, her soul, her own integrity.
She glared at him, gathering all of her strength, sobering her unexplained desires for this man with her anger. “I’ll let you walk out of this house. But if you don’t leave right now, I will force you out.”
Priapus raised an eyebrow, amused.
Returning to the living room, he turned at the front door in time to see her struggling into her pants, watching him as she hobbled while pulling them up and fastening them.
“This planet hasn’t changed a bit,” he said, frustration pouring from him. “I didn’t want to come here in the first place. But I’ll be damned if I’m cast out again.”
Opening her door, he disappeared into the night, not bothering to close it behind him.
Thena walked to her door and looked out into her front yard. She didn’t see him out front. Even after she had stepped outside, he wasn’t on the sidewalk, there was no car heading down her street.
Something funny passed through her, the oddest sensation that she’d just missed something.
Chapter Three
Over the next few days Thena did her best to adjust to normal sleeping hours. It wasn’t easy after working through the nights for so many years. Waking up with the sun shining through her windows annoyed her, and the excited chatter on the morning news and radio didn’t help manners.
She stood staring at her coffeepot, willing it to drip faster, when her phone rang. It didn’t take magic to know who called her. Her mom had called every few hours for the past couple days. And in spite of how much she knew her mama loved her and cared about her, Thena knew her answer would be the same as it had been during the past twenty calls.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, closing her eyes and envisioning her mom on the other end of the line, her long cotton gown covering her bony figure, and her silver hair coiled around the top of her head.
“Athena Lotus Cooke. How many times did I teach you that assuming something was a sign of weakness and laziness?” Her grandmother’s scratchy voice sounded stern even several states away. “That big-city living is clogging your brain. When you coming home?”
Thena shook her head, it having been a long time since she’d been scolded with the use of her full name. She smiled in spite of the lack of coffee in her system.
“Hi, Gramma,” she said, slurring her grandmother’s name just how she did as a child. “How are you?”
“Don’t you play sweet with me, missy.” Her grandmother’s voice faded in and out over the phone, and Thena imagined her pulling the receiver away from her face so she could glare at it. “You’re needed here. Now you get your behind home straight away, before I take a stick to you. I’ll be serving you at breakfast, or cursing you at dusk.”
Her grandmother hung up and Thena put the receiver down on its cradle. “Well, hell,” she sighed, turning her attention once again to the coffeepot.
There was no way she could think before coffee. Taking her mug, she quickly poured herself a cup of the fresh brew and then put the pot back so the remainder of the batch could drip. She turned to the phone, knowing it would ring. On half a ring, she picked it up and answered.
“Hi, Mom,” she said again, knowing this time she was right.
“What did Gramma Cooke say?” Her mother sounded worried and agitated.
It didn’t surprise her a bit that her mother knew that her grandmother had just called. The link between generations had always been strong.
“I’m supposed to be there by breakfast,” she said. “Which is impossible,” she added quickly. “You’ve got to help me make Gramma see that my life is here in Kansas City.”
Margaret Cooke laughed, the sound pure and refreshing, so like her mother. “It would be easier to move Kansas City next to Kentucky.” But then her tone turned serious. “Have you found a new job?”
Thena hadn’t been looking that seriously. Something seemed to be stopping her every time she picked up the classified section of the paper. She’d even tried blessing the newspaper with sage, but no matter her efforts, the second she reached the classifieds there would be something that would distract her. If was as if strange magic prevented her from searching for work.
“Not yet,” she admitted, unwilling to let her mother know the truth.
“Well, if you need money for the plane ticket, we’ll come up with it. But you need to be down here. Unless you got a man calling your name, your home is here.”
Thena’s thoughts strayed to the stranger who had so boldly entered her home the other night. She hadn’t seen him anywhere since, except in her thoughts. And he seemed to be lingering there on a regular basis, driving her crazy. Memories of his fingers stroking her skin still drove her nuts. The way he’d touched her, gazed down on her with those soft green eyes, had distracted her more than she would admit.
“Mom, do you really think I would find decent work down there?” She hadn’t been back to Kentucky in years. Thanks to the Internet, and free long distance, she kept in touch with her mom on a weekly basis. But Kansas City was her home now.
“There is plenty of work here for you to do.” Margaret applied that quiet tone, the one she only used when she was making a point that those who didn’t have the gift wouldn’t understand. “Thena. I need your help.”
Margaret Cooke never asked for anyone’s help. An uncomfortable feeling settled in Thena’s gut, the sensation that something was terribly wrong. She slid the spaghetti strap of her dress back up her narrow shoulde
r, wrinkling her brow as she squinted at the morning sun through her kitchen window.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
“You’ll see when you get here. Things aren’t right. It’s time to come home.”
Thena hung up the phone with an unsettling feeling sinking in her tummy. Her mom had been vague, but it wasn’t Margaret Cooke’s nature to complain unless something was terribly out of sorts.
Sipping at her coffee, she wondered what had her mother so worried. With years of practice and meditating, Thena had mastered sensing other’s thoughts when they were around her. But try as she did, she couldn’t reach across the states, detect what might be amiss so far away.
And she knew she wouldn’t be satisfied until she found out what her mother had meant. Staring at the pen lying on her table, she made it roll back and forth with her mind, a simple act she’d mastered as a child. Her thoughts drifted though, giving little thought to the pen moving.
Once again the man who’d entered her home appeared in her thoughts, unbeckoned. She reached out with her mind, searching. No matter where she searched, there were no powers anywhere near by, let alone someone who possessed the strength she’d sensed in him.
That was the one thing she’d never liked about Kansas City. At least at home, when she reached out with her thoughts, there was her mom and her grandmother. No matter how many covens she’d sought out here, she’d never felt that same bonding that she’d had with her own kin.
“Well, hell.” She really didn’t want to go down to Kentucky. It had been high school the last time she’d been home, and she didn’t miss the place a bit.
She’d left her home, searching out a new life, when she’d grown tired of being persecuted, taunted, belittled, because she was different from everyone else. Just because she came from a family of witches didn’t make her a bad person.
“And if I leave here, would it be because I’m running once again?” She scratched her fingernails through her short, straightened hair.
Maybe she was using the excuse that her mom was worried about something as the reason to leave. And in truth, her humiliation at being fired and not being appreciated for what she was made it easy to leave town, to once again run away.
If anyone were to approach her, ask her how to best handle a problem such as this, she would commend them for talking about it, encourage them to meditate, seek out the gods for consolation and advice.
“Think you’re smart enough to take your own advice?” she grumbled as she ran her fingers over her head, straightening her hair back down so that it pressed smoothly against her head, stopping at the nape of her neck. Standing and stretching, she felt the tension in the air, the past few days of being home and pondering her situation having clogged the energy in her home. The least she could do was burn some sage, clean house, and her mind. Then maybe a knowledge spell, or a searching incantation would help.
Thena had been raised to approach the gods in a proper manner. One didn’t go seeking help dressed in rags and not clean. Showing respect, and presenting oneself looking your best, was plain and simple good manners.
Entering her bathroom off of her bedroom, she applied some of her hair gel, greasing her short hair back until it was smooth and shiny, glistening black against the light. She chose her long hairpiece, fixing it to the back of her head with her pins, and then carefully applied makeup. After wrapping a red scarf around her hair, putting it up in a ponytail, Thena padded through her bedroom, the wooden floor under her feet cool against her skin. She stripped out of the simple sundress she’d put on that morning, and then took a deep breath, again distracted by what had happened a few days ago when she’d been caught naked in her home by a stranger.
“The best thing to do when you fall off a bike is to get right back on,” she told herself firmly, knowing if she kept her clothes on, she would be surrendering to her preoccupation that she might be interrupted again.
Most everything she needed to perform the simple incantation of seeking advice was on her dresser—her oils and candles, and a wooden incense holder with fresh sage lying in it.
Tradition stated the chant should be done before a full moon, but she didn’t want to wait for nightfall to seek out the gods. “And there’s nothing wrong with compromise,” she said out loud while turning on her lamp and then wrapping one of her scarves around the lampshade to focus the light.
Taking the plate her oils sat on, she poured one of her oils on it in a circle, sprinkled some of the sage over it, and then lit it on fire. She positioned the light so that it shone in the middle of the burning circle, and then began her chant.
Her athame was a small dagger, no bigger than her hand. Its wooden handle was worn smooth from the many times she’d used it. Having been a gift from her grandmother when she’d turned sixteen, she’d never replaced it.
Holding it now, she used it to draw a mental line through the air.
“I call to the east, to the rising sun.” She turned, raising her arms while she cleared her thoughts and allowed her soul to open to her spell. She continued. “To the south with its warmth, to the west, where the sun sleeps, to the north, with its cool refreshing air.”
Cutting the air with the athame, she created a circle around herself.
Thena turned to the small fire that burned on the plate on her dresser. She ran her small dagger through the smoke, swaying its path. The lamplight shone over her hands, her skin glowing. “Good light. Full light. Light that shines upon me. Guide me and show me what I must know.”
The words were barely uttered, yet no one needed to hear them in the conventional manner. Closing her eyes, holding her hands in the smoke, feeling the heat of the fire, the herbs filling her with their rich scent, she repeated her words.
“Ease the trouble from my mind so that I may see what troubles my family.” She let her head fall back, feeling the powers of her spell consume her, images dancing through a fog in her mind.
Darkness consumed her, shadows moving just beyond her mind’s eye that she couldn’t focus on. Something was wrong. There was trouble. Things weren’t as they appeared. None of it made any sense, but she knew things weren’t as they appeared.
“Things aren’t right.” Her mother’s words echoed through her head.
Her phone rang and she ignored it, swaying slightly while she struggled to figure out what she saw in her mind. Nothing would come into focus though. The strangest sensation that she was seeing people she knew, yet they weren’t who they appeared to be, taunted her. Chills rushed over her body. The fire beneath her fingers no longer burned hot, but icy cold. She shivered, closing her eyes tighter while she struggled to understand what was being shown to her.
Thena, I’m not going to hurt you. The words of the stranger who’d entered her house the other night brushed through her, whispered so close to her head that she knew if she opened her eyes he would be standing right next to her.
Her body responded to him, her nipples hardening while her breasts swelled, aching to be touched, caressed. Her tummy flip-flopped, a sudden desire warming the chill she’d felt moments before. Pressure peaked between her legs, the growing urge to be touched, stroked and fondled distracting her.
“Guide me and show me what I must know.” She had to concentrate, allow her magic to guide her.
The sage burned rich around her, cleaning the cobwebs from her brain. She focused on it, doing her best to push out all other thoughts while imagining the sage moving through her home, ridding it of the frustration and animosity she’d experienced over the past few days.
The rooms of her house faded from her mind all too quickly though.
Darkness continued to envelop her, images walking around her, just out of her line of vision so that she couldn’t see them. And they didn’t want to be seen. That realization bothered her. People, or creatures, or something, lingered just out of range of her vision, hiding, whispering among themselves. They knew she watched them and they didn’t like it. Uneasiness sank in her gut. No one in
tentionally hid unless they were up to no good.
Then there were faces, familiar and almost forgotten. The people she’d grown up with, members of her hometown. They moved, walked past her, there but not there. It was as if something had consumed them, made them appear normal but something wasn’t right.
A hard knock on her door startled her, sending the images flying from her mind.
“Shit,” Thena gasped, falling backwards, losing her spell. Grabbing the side of her bed, she managed to not fall on her rear. “Damn it.”
Quickly she blew out the small fire burning on the plate and then grabbed her dress, struggling to pull it over her head as whoever it was knocked again even louder.
“Thena. Let me in.” It was her friend Naomi. “You better open this door before Merco forces it open.”
The concern in her friend’s voice made Thena hurry, and she quickly adjusted her dress over her before flipping the lock and opening the door to her friends’ concerned faces.
“I tried to call,” Naomi said, her smile apologetic.
“I’m sorry. I was busy.” Thena ran her hands down her dress, her thoughts still filled with the images she’d seen while working her magic.
She backed up to let her friends in. Naomi had been her friend for years, the two of them having worked at the factory together. Naomi had left the factory, and married Merco, a man Thena didn’t know well, but who seemed nice enough. One thing she did know about him from the few times she’d met him before, he possessed a level of magic, of power, that surpassed her own. The few times she’d approached the subject with Naomi, her friend had quickly changed the subject. Thena had interpreted that as her friend wanting to keep the matter private.
“We were worried about you.” Naomi immediately made herself comfortable, sitting on the edge of Thena’s couch. “Merco thought we should come check on you. How are you doing?”
Thena smiled, trying to appear relaxed. “Still licking my wounds over being fired.”
Naomi frowned and nodded. “They were stupid to fire you.”
Fallen Gods: Lotus Blooming Page 3
